


Just a bad dream

by RadiatedCat (Andauril)



Series: Wasteland Chronicles [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Loss, Sad, happy dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 04:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5277011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andauril/pseuds/RadiatedCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even her dreams seem more real than the reality she woke up to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a bad dream

Her legs ache by the time the sun sinks behind the horizon. Her feet hurt with every step she takes, but she forces herself to keep going. She can’t stop. It’s not safe.

She never walked so much in her entire life.

Her vision blurs every now and then, and she has to blink to keep her eyes from closing all on their own.

She’s never been so tired in her whole life.

When the shack comes into view, she can’t help but sigh in relief. There’s only one entrance, and the inside is cluttered with garbage. It’s as good a spot as any to rest.

Cassidy slams the door shut and sacks against the wall. It smells of dust inside the shack, of dirt, of decay. The wood scrunches under the soles of her feet, and the old corrugated sheets the walls are made from seem rusty.

She slumps against the wall and stretches. Too tired to think.

Her stomach is rumbling.

She pulls a cereal bar out of the pocket of her blue jumbsuit – Preston gave it to her in Sanctuary before she left – and takes a big bit from it. She can’t name the fruits in it, they are like nothing she tasted before. Strange.

But she’s too hungry to care.

She it’s it all and it drives the sharpest pang from her belly, but she wishes there’d been more. She’s got another two in her pockets, but she needs save them for later. Who knows where she can get something to eat in this …

It can’t be real.

Maybe if she wakes up tomorrow she’ll find out it’s been just a bad dream. The bombs, the descent into the Vault, Nate being shot and Shaun taken without her being able to do anything …

Just helplessly watching while they rip him from his father’s arms and walk away, with the babe screaming so loudly she can still hear it now …

She has to find him. Has to …

A touch on her shoulders has her look open her eyes and look up.

It feels like a thousand tons of weight is falling off her chest all of a sudden.

Nate smiles at her, brown eyes sparkling. Shaun’s sleeping in his arms, peaceful and safe, soft mouth open and drooling on his father’s sleeves and she can’t help but smile.

“Hey! I finally got him to sleep.” Nate kneels down next to her. “Didn’t want to wake you for it, thought you needed some rest.”

“Thank you, hon.” She can’t drive that stupid smile off her face, but she’s just so relieved.

Everything’s alright. Everything’s fine. He’s alive, Shaun’s safe. The world outside the windows is green and friendly, flowers blooming in the gardens of white little houses. Home.

“Do you want to hold him?”

“What a question!”

The moment she feels his familiar weight in her arms, her eyes start tearing. Shaun’s little legs kick in the air, and she pulls him closer to her chest. He’s so warm in her arms, so near, so real …

“Everything okay with you, darling?”

Cassidy looks up. She feels tears on her cheeks but doesn’t dare wipe them away, or Shaun could wake up.

“It’s nothing, hon.” She smiles through the tears. “Just a bad dream. I’m fine.”

She rocks Shaun in her arms, slowly. God, she never wants to let go off him again. Not after that nightmare. She shivers even thinking about it. But it’s over now. She’s safe, they’re all safe.

“Hm, what about I make you breakfast?”

Cassidy nods. More time with her son in her arms. His hair is as black as his fathers, and thick already for a babe … The prettiest boy in the world, she can already tell what a wonderful person he’ll make when he’s grown up. She can’t wait to see his first steps, hear his first words, all the things he’ll tell her when he comes back from his first day in school.

She rocks Shaun in her arms, humming the melody her mother used to sing to her when she was a child. It always helps Shaun to sleep. She doesn’t want to wake him.

Nate’s in the kitchen, she can hear him … the clunk of frying pans, the cupboards opening. There’s also music from the radio.

Codsworth floats by, mumbling something about doing the hovering today.

Cassidy presses a kiss to her son’s head and leans back in her chair. She closes her eyes and sighs. Just a bad dream. Nothing of that happened. No bombs, no kidnapping, no dead Nate. Everything’s good, everything’s fine. Just a bad dream …

It’s the sound of raindrops pattering against corrugated iron that wakes her.

Even before she opens her eyes, she knows something is wrong. Her arms are empty, and her back aches. The air tastes damp on her tongue.

Cassidy opens her eyes.

Reality hits her so hard she can’t breathe. The shack, rusty corrugated sheets and cluttered junk on the brittle wooden planks that make the floor. And she’s alone.

She’s alone.

It all happened. The bombs, Nate murdered, Shaun kidnapped, her stepping out into a devastated Sanctuary with ruins and car wrecks everywhere and grey and brown grass cracking under her every step and Codsworth, left to himself for 200 years and half mad.

She’s alone.

It wasn’t just a bad dream.

 

 

 


End file.
